It was always known that memory management was a challenge in the traditional systems where a few data points are in the play slowing down the process; this challenge becomes insurmountable when one deals with Big Data. MIT has recently announced a new programming language – MILK, which increases the speed of the common algorithms by 4x. This is believed to help in memory management and especially when we have Big Data playing a prominent part in the technologies of today.
The major reason for the clog in the performance is the need to retrieve data from the main memory of today’s chip and having to do this repeatedly slows down execution. Since memory management works on the principle of locality which assumes a program not only requires a particular portion of data stored in distant memory but may also require the neighboring portions as well. Thus slowing the process considerably. In Big Data however this does not play, it is usually the need to retrieve few datapoints scattered over huge data sets.
The new language MILK developed by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory helps application developers to manage memory more efficiently. Application developer, using MILK, adds a few lines of code to any instructions written to retrieve a few data points scattered across huge data sources. MILK compilers then resolve to manage the memory management accordingly.
According to MIT, the programs written in MILK were four times faster than those written in existing languages, and ran on some common algorithm and promised that this will only get better as lot more research is envisaged to fine tune the technology further.
For more on this please read this article by Katherine Noyes @ http://www.infoworld.com/article/3120689/big-data/new- programming-language- promises-a-4x-speed- boost-on- big-data.html
Tags: MILK, Big Data, Memory Management